The fire in our backyard that day was
spectacular with satin and guipure.

She and I sat for hours

chores undone

and watched it touch a Caribbean sky

and then slowly

come down again.

This November

my wedding dress stands stiff in a closet

in my parents' house in New Jersey.

It is off-white, threaded with gold in
places,

a precise a-line,

pearls stitched at equal distance from
each other,

its still train, unpinned,

in a closet in my parents' house

where they just celebrated 47 years of
marriage.

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Charmaine Valere is a Guyanese-American writer whose non-fiction writing has been published inThe Caribbean Review of Books,Caribbean Beat Magazine, andSx Salon Journal. She has taught writing and literature courses at several colleges in New Jersey, and she maintains a blog,Signifyinguyana, where she writes on Caribbean literature, with a special focus on the works of Caribbean women writers.